Billy Zoom, the guitarist for the Los Angeles punk band X, once read a review of the first Ramones album that, he recalled, said “all their songs were too fast, too short, only had three chords, no guitar solos, the lyrics were dumb.” To Zoom, “it just all sounded like real positive things.”

María Luisa O’Neill-Morales, the 12-year-old narrator of Celia C. Pérez’s children’s book debut, “The First Rule of Punk,” would probably add to that list of virtues the Ramones’ leather-jacketed, pudding-bowl-haircut look. She’s trying to cultivate her own punk style, if only life would stop interfering. As the novel opens, Malú — as she’s called by those who don’t want to irritate her — has her bags packed: Her English-professor mother’s teaching fellowship means they’ll be moving to Chicago for two years. At least it’s a brand-new subject for her zines, pastiches with handwritten, drawn and collage elements that Pérez, a seasoned zine artist, plants between chapters. They are “self-published booklets, like homemade magazines,” Malú explains to readers who may have been born after the dawn of the medium. Zines “can be about anything — not just punk.” In the Ramones’ and X’s heyday, fanzines were indeed dedicated to punk and indie rock bands, but in this confessional era, why wouldn’t they also be, as Malú’s are, diary-like repositories for tween-age angst?

In Chicago, Malú, whose parents are divorced, pines for her father, Michael, who, conjuring a long-lost Nick Hornby character, lives in an apartment above his record shop back home in Florida. It’s the punk bands of Michael’s generation that speak to Malú, although Pérez has her young protagonist say things like “punky” and “rad,” which makes her sound like a Disney-style punk — more Bill and Ted than Sid and Nancy. But Malú is a kid straddling multiple worlds, so this seeming mismatch may be Pérez’s point. Michael likes to tell his daughter, “You got your Mexican from Mom and your punk from me.” Her mom, Magaly Morales — or SuperMexican, as Malú refers to her — teaches Latino literature, wears Guadalupe earrings, and wants her daughter to “try for less punk rocker and more señorita.” Malú figures she’s an utter failure at “this señorita business,” what with her vegetarianism, black nail polish, and Doc Martens. Also, what kind of Mexican hates cilantro?

Malú’s dad tells her that to find her place at her new school she must follow the first rule of punk: Be yourself. It doesn’t work. On Malú’s first day of seventh grade, her heavily made-up eyes (SuperMexican tells her she looks like Nosferatu) earn her both chiding from a mean girl named Selena Ramirez and a dress-code violation. All infractors must report to the school auditorium, where Malú spots a potential kindred spirit in blue-haired Joe (né José) Hidalgo. Soon Malú ropes Joe and two other wallflowers into forming a band so they can audition for the school talent show. The band gets its name, the Co-Co’s, from Selena, who calls Malú a coconut: brown on the outside but white on the inside.

Despite rewriting the Ramones’ “Blitzkrieg Bop” with adult-pacifying lyrics and rehearsing themselves silly, the Co-Co’s don’t make the cut. Malú finds out the problem was not the band’s lack of talent but its lack of traditionalism and volume control. Joe calls this what it is — “anti-weirdo discrimination” — and the Co-Co’s start a protest that even normals can support.

Malú’s struggle over whether she can have both a punk and a Mexican identity plays out a bit too schematically. It’s a little too handy that Joe’s mom, who has tattoos and a pink stripe in her hair, arrives at just the right time, ready to teach Malú about the Mexicans who helped build American punk. (Wouldn’t Malú’s dad have shared this intel?) More affecting are the glimpses at Malú’s anxieties in her zines. “It’s like Mom’s María Luisa and my Malú are two different people,” she writes in one called “The Story of a Name (My Name!).”

Right before Joe dyes Malú’s hair green, he says, “Your problem is, you think punk is about the way someone looks. Or the music someone listens to,” to which Malú replies, “Well, that’s part of it.” That she’s trying to figure out who she is, one look at a time, doesn’t make her a poser; it makes her an adolescent finding her way while tussling with a parent who doesn’t get her. And it gives Malú’s story a universality that can speak to someone who’s coconut, Oreo, white bread — or anything else.

Nell Beram is the co-author of “Yoko Ono: Collector of Skies.” She writes the column Best Forgotten for The Awl.